The Republicans accelerate their downward spiral

It's as if they didn't learn a thing from the 2012 elections. Republicans are on the same suicide mission as before -- trying to block immigration reform (if they can't scuttle it in the Senate, they're ready to in the House), roll back the clock on abortion rights (they're pushing federal and state legislation to ban abortions in the first 22 weeks), and stop gay marriage wherever possible.

As almost everyone knows by now, this puts them on the wrong side of history. America is becoming more ethnically diverse, women are gaining economic and political power, and young people are more socially libertarian than ever before.

Why can't Republicans learn?

It's no answer to say their "base" -- ever older, whiter, more rural and male -- won't budge. The Democratic Party of the 1990s simply ignored its old base and became New Democrats, spearheading a North American Free Trade Act (to the chagrin of organized labor), performance standards in classrooms (resisted by teachers' unions) and welfare reform and crime control (upsetting traditional liberals).

The real answer is the Republican base is far more entrenched, institutionally, than was the old Democratic base. And its power is concentrated in certain states -- most of the old Confederacy plus Arizona, Alaska, Indiana, and Wisconsin -- which together exert more of a choke-hold on the Republican national party machinery than the old Democrats, spread widely but thinly over many states, exerted on the Democratic Party.

These Republican states are more homogenous and conspicuously less like the rest of America than the urbanized regions of the country that are growing more rapidly. Senators and representatives from these states naturally reflect the dominant views of their constituents -- on immigration, abortion, and gay marriage, as well as guns, marijuana, race, and dozens of other salient issues. But these views are increasingly out of step with where most of the nation is heading.

I basically agree that the GOP is on a kamikase mission toward oblivion. Do you agree?

Well, we'll know if they did anything unconstitutional once the Supremes rule on it.

We'll know when we see the evidence and hear the testimony (assuming it ever sees the inside of a courtroom). How the Supreme Court rules is another matter.

The Supremes have ruled that African Americans are livestock and that God is secular: corrupt minds employing specious reasoning to produce the desired (but not correct) result under pressure. I'd say the kangaroo Roberts Court and what is likely the largest, most powerful, and most effective signal intelligence network ever built probably qualifies as putting "corrupt minds under pressure" to produce the desired result. But we'll see.

Snowden played it the wrong way. And now he's taking information that could endanger many US agents and their confidants to imprisonment or death by seeking refuge under the wing of an enemy.

Bradley Manning showed us what happens when you stick around to play it any way at all. Solitary confinement and forced to sleep naked and sheetless, living under conditions even a military judge called “excessive.” You don't think Snowden considered that? Hero or traitor, the man is no fool.

There is no refuge with any country friend enough to the US to have an extradition treaty or not grant political asylum. That limits his choices. And what "enemy" are you referring to? The US is not at war with China or Ecuador.

Who says Snowden is providing information about US agents and their confidants to a foreign country? I haven't run across anything about that.

Mike, the fear is that he has a lot of information beyond the possibly illegal actions he has revealed and now he's seeking refuge in countries hostile to the US. Had he pursued whistleblowing instead of violating his oath he would have put himself or the US in the position he and we are in now.

I believe it's been asked but has it been answered? Aside from a bit of embarrassment, what actual damage has been done. Yes, both Manning and Snowden had access to life-threatening info, but wasn't most of the potentially damaging stuff redacted?

I saw a british programme on this and that journalist felt that, aside from the isolated actions of a few, the US comes out of all this looking like the good guy - genuinely interested in making the world a better place. Imagine if someone decided to (and were able to) leak the inner-most thoughts and secret dealings of Exxon/Mobil, or Halliburton (etc.). Now THAT would be interesting!!